Addictive Video Games

This past weekend, I had my brother over. He just finished his second year as a medical student at The Johns Hopkins University. Though he has started rotations now, he has many more free weekends than when he had classes, so I finally got to spend some time with him. Being the dork that I am, I decided this time would be well-spent playing Rock Band, partially because I wanted to see how he'd like it since I was considering buying him and his housemates the game. They already have Guitar Hero III, but they only own one guitar and plus there are three of them.

Anyway, my boyfriend and I started him out on drums while we played guitar and bass. We warned him to try easy first (note: if it was his first time playing guitar, I'd suggest medium, not easy), but he decided to try medium. The first song he failed too quickly for either of us to even have the chance to develop enough energy (or star power, for those Guitar Hero players) to save him. So he switched to easy, and after failing the first few songs, got the hang of it. Then we switched it around, and I made a four song set list for him to play lead guitar on. I chose: "I Think I'm Paranoid", "Maps", "Say It Ain't So", and "Orange Crush", which he played on hard. I think these are the most fun songs to sightread on hard or expert. (Feel free to chime in with your own suggestions of what songs are the best to sightread for the first time on hard or expert levels.)

It got late so my bf went to bed, but my brother and I stayed up looking for more games to play. We went through several random XBox Live Arcade games, and then I decided to show him my Puzzle Quest character. I showed him a fight, then went to find another mob for him to fight. It turned out it was my first chance at capturing a Liche. So we went into the capture puzzle so I could show him that the game also has other types of puzzles.

Little did I know, over an hour later we'd still be on the same capture puzzle. This particular one had a lot of flaming skulls, which I always have more trouble predicting. We took turns trying to defeat it, while taking into account each other's failures and successes. Finally he beat it. It was 4:30am by then and I was exhausted, so I went to bed and gave him control of my character.

The next morning I woke him up at 11:30am so we could go to the NBA playoff game we had tickets to. It turned out that he had stayed up until 9am playing, leveling my character from 33 to 37. The game is strangely addicting. What sort of game is it? Basically, it's like one of those puzzle games with colored gems on the board, and you have to pick two adjacent gems to switch positions in order to make a three-of-a-kind along the vertical or horizontal for at least one of the two gems. Except this variant is an RPG. You can earn money or experience by matching certain pieces, do damage with others, and gain mana with the rest. Instead of switching gems, you can use your mana to cast spells as your turn. Leveling allows you to gain higher stats (which give you added bonuses on matching) and better spells. You travel around to different cities looking for quests to do and mobs to fight in this matter. See? It sounds like an innocuous game, but start playing it, and you'll find it strangely addicting. My brother just called me last night. He downloaded the game on his houses' XBox 360 and started his own character.

Meanwhile, my boyfriend was somehow addicted to Ratchet and Clank. While he was using the TV to play that, I was bored, so I downloaded Puzzle Quest onto my laptop and started a new character there. He just got to the final boss though, so I guess he's done with that game.

Luckily, after I make this post, I'm headed out to buy Grand Theft Auto IV. It got a perfect 10 on GameSpot (only the fifth time it's been awarded) as well as a perfect 10 on IGN and IGN UK (the first perfect 10 given by IGN UK). Think either of us will get addicted to this one? Nah... of course not!

Customizing your Cubicle

According to several random sources, today is National Cubical Day. There's no wikipedia entry about it yet, but a little googling claims that it started on October 2, 2006. Yeah, doesn't make sense to me either. But in celebration of this supposed holiday, I will use it as today's topic.

Sure, cubicles have their downfalls. The lack of privacy, with everyone being able to hear your phone conversations. The lack of windows. And often, the lack of space. But it can still be your own space that you can make more comfortable and your own. Here are some ways you can customize your cubicle.

Put up posters or wall calendars

Cubicle walls can be tacked upon just like office walls. Often times, even easier with cardboard or cloth walls, than leaving holes in dry wall. I modified upon this theme and pinned a 'I <3 Robots' button onto my cloth cubicle wall.

Put up pictures or drawings

This is similar, but more personable. You can put up pictures of your family or friends. Since I am unmarried with no children though, I prefer not having personal pictures up. Instead I have drawings done by my boyfriend's nieces.

Bring in plants

I've seen coworkers bring in fresh cut flowers everyday. My father keeps a spider plant in his cube. Personally, I prefer not having to do so much to upkeep my plants, so I've kept mini cacti and small bamboo plants in my cube instead (which need little watering).

Bring in figurines and toys

Don't clutter your desk with too many of these, but a small toy can bring a lot of character to your cube. I used to keep a one foot tall figurine of The Brain from Pinky and the Brain on my bookshelf. As I mentioned Friday, I've had a coworker who had Jabba the Hutt in his cube. I've also seen the Robosapien and others. You can also find some "cubicle goodies" at ThinkGeek under their geek toys section. When I had a large cubicle with a ton of desk space at one company, I kept a full-sized go board on my desk and set-up a problem on the board. It was fun for people taking a break to stop by and stare at the problem, and a great conversational piece for people walking by for the first time to stop by and actually meet me.

Devote one drawer to snack food

Have your snack food hidden away so people won't take your food while you're not around. But have it so people who get the afternoon munchies might wander over and ask if your drawer is currently stocked with something good. You can either tell them no and make them go away, or open up the drawer and show off what goodies it may hide.

What are ways you've decorated your cube(s)?

Top 10 Movies Referenced in a Tech Workplace

Let me start off by saying that this is not a top geek movie list. People quote movies based on situations that come up using a recognizable line. While your fellow coworkers may all love Blade Runner and Serenity, they did not make it on this list. To understand those seemingly inside jokes the engineers in your office laugh at when someone quotes some movie, these are the movies to watch:

10. Spaceballs
Let's order from Pizza the Hutt! No, your coworker didn't just misspeak. You just heard a very lame reference to Spaceballs, a Star Wars spoof.

9. The Godfather
Perhaps your boss did something because he was "made an offer he can't refuse" by the head office.

8. The Matrix
What will it be for you? The red pill or the blue pill? While you decide, maybe I'll go download some more information straight to my head.

7. Dr. Strangelove (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb)
Be sure to wipe the whiteboard clean after a meeting, or "He'll see the big board!" And of course, "You can't fight in here! This is the war room!"

6. The Princess Bride
I don't think it's very "Inconceivable!" that this movie would show up on this list. I should hurry and get to the top five you say? "As you wish."

5. South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut
Pretty much any workplace I've been at, if Canada is brought up, someone mentions either flappy heads or starts singing "Blame Canada". These, along with "What Would Brian Boitano Do?", come from none other than the South Park movie.

4. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
I have to say, on this list of movies, this is the one that somehow constantly gets referenced, yet I cannot pinpoint anything about the workplace that would trigger the references. I suppose "Tis only a flesh wound" could refer to a papercut, and maybe a task as a quest. But really, quotes come flying from this movie for just about anything. So through some "logical" reasoning, it must've been the fault of a witch!

3. Airplane!
Coworker spill a glass a water? He must have a "drinking problem". Surely I must be joking? Well, "I never joke, and don't call me Shirley."

2. Star Wars Trilogy
I cheated and put the whole series together on this one. But really, I don't see references to a single movie, but rather the set of movies. And how can references not be made, as I sit among servers called, "thedarkside", "naboo", "leia", "luke", etc. At a previous workplace, one coworker had a large figurine of Jabba the Hut covering half his tablespace!

1. Office Space
It's not surprising that the top references movie in a tech workplace is a movie about a tech workplace. If you come in looking bummed at the beginning of the week, don't be surprised if you hear, "Case of the Mondays?" At job fairs you see signs saying "No cubicles! No TPS Reports!" There's no escaping this movie.

Nintendo Nostalgia

It's amazing to me how much people become nostalgic about Nintendo. I got thinking about this today when I read about a NES Cartridge Modded into NES System. It made me think about this time last year, when CMU's chapter of SigEp built the SNES Booth for the Spring Carnival booth competition. Walking through the structure, I could tell the frat boys were reminiscing to their childhood days of playing SNES when designing every aspect of the booth.

You've very likely seen this popular YouTube video of a modified impossible Mario game being played and commented on aloud:

It is clearly yet another example of a nostalgic memorial to a now-antiquated system.

At the age of 14, my friend, the video game journalist formerly known as the "Video Games Ombudsman" Kyle Orland started the Super Mario Brothers Headquarters. Over a decade later, it is still a highly active and popular site.

I guess part of my problem is that I don't share this same sentiment of nostalgia for the SNES as others. I never had one when growing up; I only had an old Atari. Going over to friends' houses in elementary school meant we would take turns playing Mario, but my turn would last about 50 seconds, since I didn't know how to time my jumps and I'd land poorly on a Goomba (I had to look up what they are called). Meanwhile, since all my friends owned systems, their turns would last forever. In my neighborhood at least, I was certainly in the minority of children without and SNES. Though at the same time I suppose I understand it. Older generations seem to have the same nostalgia for classic arcade games such as Pacman/Ms. Pacman and Galaga. There are so many different console systems now though, I wonder what our kids will look back to.

Montgomery Blair High School Magnet Program

Today, I blog about a more personal topic. I was privileged to go to the Math, Science, and Computer Science Magnet Program at Montgomery Blair High School. It is a public school program for the top 100 mathematically enabled students in the county. The students are chosen through essays, teacher recommendations, and test scores, much like the college process. The program allows these students to take a highly accelerated curriculum in mathematics, science, engineering, and computer science. It is held in a public school, and the students still take their English, social studies, gym, arts, etc. classes with other public school students that are not part of the program. Freshmen and sophomore years, the curriculum is pretty rigid and require all the students to rotate through physics, chemistry, earth sciences, and biology during the four semesters. Paired with each of these sciences are a computer science course and an engineering course. The coursework is done in an interdisciplinary way such that projects are created with all three subjects in mind. For example, when I was in the magnet, in the very first month of being a high-school magnet student, students are required to engineer and build a device to transport a 1" ball bearing through a 3" diameter hole in a vertical wall 10/10 times. The closest point of the device must be at least 1 yard away from the wall at all times, and the hole is 10" from the ground. Students must create a computer simulation using physics equations to show the device's trajectory and how it is affected by things such as the coefficient of air friction.

Junior and senior years, students are given a lot of flexibility. They can choose from elective courses like Optics, Artificial Intelligence with LISP, Robotics, Complex Analysis (Multi-variate Calculus), Materials Engineering, and Discrete Mathematics. The magnet is also very generous about allowing other students in the school not part of the magnet program take advantage of these great courses and the resources of the magnet program. In my own experience, I had several non-magnet classmates in my Marine Biology, Quantum Physics, and Thermodynamics courses. Magnet teachers are also generous in their time by sponsoring various after-school activities and sports for the whole school. It is not uncommon for just one magnet teacher to sponsor 4 to 7 after-school clubs.

If it was not for the magnet, I would not have found out about my aptitude for computer science. I was given the chance to have hands on experience on being a Systems Administrator when I was fifteen years old. I got to play with chemicals in a Fourier-transform microwave spectrometer at the National Institute of Technology for a whole summer and learned to write a research paper on it good enough for me to become semi-finalist in the Intel Science Talent Search (formerly Westinghouse), which the Blair Magnet Program holds the highest number of semifinalists from one school nearly every year. My fellow classmates have gone to top schools across the nation and followed there dreams wherever they led them. Some became lawyers, doctors, engineers or businessmen. But there are also the ones who took their geekdom to TV, author a webcomic or a video game journalist, win puzzle solving world champions, became an entrepreneur with a Dessert Truck in the middle of NYC, hold a seat as Maryland House of Delegate representative, traveled to a foreign country to teach English, and really do whatever we wanted with our lives. I wouldn't be surprised if everyone one of those people would say that going to Blair affected their lives and their careers in at least some way or another. Whether it was the connections we gained, the encouragement and stimulation our minds received, and the opportunities we had to do things that other schools did not offer, it changed our lives in a highly positive way.

The reason I decided to write so loquaciously about this topic is because the Montgomery County Board of Education has decided to severely cut funding for this program. Though it's a small program, there are many of us who have been influenced by the program and we are not happy by the county's budget proposals. Being that it is a small program however, the cuts they are making are small compared to the overall budget, but cause a huge impact on the program.

I am nowhere near the point in my life to seriously plan this right now, but I had always wanted to raise kids in the area I grew up in. I don't think it's very uncommon of a dream though. I am just sad that I will not be able to give them the same opportunities I had, and it is out of my control.

Text Message Services

I started text messaging five years ago. It started extremely infrequently. Text messages weren't very popular yet, and many of my friends would get mad if you sent them a text since it cost them extra money. But slowly it started to catch on. It was nice though that already back then you could use AIM to send an SMS to a phone, and the phone could respond back. I didn't know of a way to initiate an AIM though.

As more of my friends started to catch on to text messaging, I eventually got a 20 text messages/month plan. Then suddenly I had friends who started text messaging after I started, but had unlimited plans and were using it constantly. This bumped me up to 50 SMS/month and eventually to also get an unlimited plan myself. Text messages were useful for communicating with someone when you're in a noisy bar and they are still trying to find their way. I personally don't have my text message notifications make a sound, so I tell friends to text me to check if I'm awake if they are afraid of calling too late (meaning at 3am, since I'm a known insomniac). Coworkers would text in meetings. They are good for leaving messages for people who are notorious for not checking voicemail, finding out a quick answer for something that does not require a full conversation, or just letting someone know something that you do not need an immediate answer to, or an answer at all.

But text messages aren't only useful for communicating to people. There are many bots out there that text message for useful reasons. Having an unlimited plan makes it easier to take advantage of these services.

GOOGLE (466453)
This is the service I send text messages to the most often. It provides many useful features. On initial set-up, I set the zip code of where I live (by texting "set location <zipcode>"). This is how I might text GOOGLE on a typical day:

When I wake up in the morning, I text message GOOGLE "w" and it responds back with the weather for today. I get dressed accordingly and go to work. My coworkers and I want to go to lunch. Someone has a craving for Mexican food, so I text message "mexican" and GOOGLE responds back with the Mexican restaurants in the area, along with their addresses and phone numbers. In a meeting later, someone uses a word I'm not familiar with. I quickly text "define <word>" and learn it (depending on the company I've worked at, either everyone texted in meetings and it was okay, or nobody did and it was considered rude to do so). After work, I'm supposed to meet some friends at a bar downtown that I've never been to. I remember the name, but forgot to write down the address. So I text message "<bar name> <zipcode, since it's not in my set zipcode>" and get the address. I do not recognize the address, so I get directions by texting "<work address> to <bar address>". Using these directions, I get to the bar. While at the bar, a song comes on. It sounds familiar, but none of us can remember the name of the song. So I text message "web lyrics don't you remember you told me you loved me baby" and have a sudden "Duh" moment. Someone asks me if I happened to catch last night's hockey game and what the score was. I text message "score <teamname>" and find out.

Between sending and receiving the text messages with some of the responses being multiple texts, I probably just used up my old quota of 20 texts/month right there. But I don't blink an eye with my unlimited plan, and I find the convenience worth it!

Google Calendar (GVENT/48368)
I keep my calendar on Google Calendar. It has a nifty option to have your calendar events texted to you for a reminder, so I have it set up to both text message me 24 hours before an event, and 1 hour before an event. In cases where I might need an address later, I include the address in my description of my event so I get in my text as well. I never forget anymore.

You can also check your calendar by sending texts to GVENT using various commands.

MYNBA (69622)
I grew up watching the NBA. When I can't get to a TV to watch the game, I like having updates at halftime and the end of the game on how my team's doing, so I signed up for alerts from MYNBA. They also text me when it's a close game with 5 minutes to go, so I can maybe hurry to a TV to catch the end of it. To find your team's code, go here.

Note: other sport organizations provide similar services, as do other websites (such as CBSSports). This is just the one I use.

AIMAIM (246246) or AOL010 (265010)
Like I mentioned before, AIM was one of the first services that caught onto SMS, but it's also really evolved since then. Now you can log into an screenname or initiate conversations. You can opt not to sign into a screenname, and your screenname will just be your phone number (example: +15558675309). I don't think AOL's own website does a good enough job explaining their own service, so you can refer to this pdf I found online.

40404
I'm not quite sure why they chose this shortcode, but this is the shortcode for Twitter. You have to log online onto your account to set it up, but after you give them your phone number, you can send text messages to this shortcode to update your Twitter messages. You can also set it up so that your friends' Twitter updates come to your phone, but with how often some people Twitter, I personally have avoided the latter option.


The services I listed above are free by the provider, meaning that they don't cost anything extra besides what your normal text messaging plan is. I want to warn those just getting into SMS services however, there are similar services out there that do tack on an additional charge, so beware. But for me, until the next generation of iPhones come out and I get that, I find no reason to pay for data/web capability on my phone while I have unlimited texting. The various services out there seem to provide everything I need. Feel free to suggest to me SMS services you use yourself!

Typing Pains

Like many of my colleagues, I suffer pains from poor positioning and long hours of typing. Most people mistakenly consider all types of pains from typing as carpal tunnel, though that's not the only condition and not all conditions should be treated the same way.

Many people use a wrist brace to help. I've heard several people vouch for this Futuro one. Other people however, such as myself, get the pain in the elbow, not the wrist. A former co-worker who also had elbow pain suggested the Mueller Shokk Elbow Pad, which helps him. But even though my elbows were in pain, somehow it was caused by the positioning of my wrists, though not in a way that the wrist brace would help. I tried the natural keyboards, changing to Dvorak, the keyboard wrist pads, etc. None of those worked. Finally I went to see a specialist, but the best he could do was prescribe me some NSAIDs.

Eventually, I discovered the Kinesis Advantage contoured keyboard.

So far I feel like I sound like an infomercial here, but let me clarify that I don't think this is the solution for everyone, just as the other solutions aren't for everyone either. It was an expensive keyboard, and I was skeptical of whether it would work or not, but I ordered one. It actually worked for me though. The keyboard forces me to relax my wrists and keep them up, instead of digging them into the table or laptop or wrist pad as I usually do. Apparently I end up stressing my whole arm with the way I normally keep my wrists down as if they had ten pound weights hanging off of them. I later was told that I could expense the keyboard to the company, but at that point I decided not to. I didn't want the keyboard to become company property such that I couldn't take it with me when I left.

The most surprising part about this keyboard was that it wasn't hard for me to learn or get used to at all. When I had tried switching to Dvorak, there were a few weeks of slow and frustrating typing. With this keyboard, you can type in QWERTY just fine pretty normally. The main part is getting used to where backspace and enter are, which aren't too hard to get used to. The keyboard also makes a lot of sense especially to people who use emacs or other programs that use the CTRL key a lot. On most keyboards, the CTRL key is positioned such that you are expected to hit it with your pinkie, a very weak finger. This keyboard repositions the CTRL key to the thumb, which is both convenient and a lot easier on the hands.

I have since switched jobs and I carried my lovely keyboard with me. I plan on keeping making sure this keyboard stays with me wherever I work, as it has certainly saved me a lot of money on Ibuprofen and Mobic.

The Last Lecture

I just finished reading The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch (which I pre-ordered). Randy is a well-loved professor who taught in the School of Computer Science at my alma mater, Carnegie Mellon University. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, the fastest acting of the cancers. I've seen it happen; my grandfather passed away from it. 8 months ago, Randy was told he only had 3-6 months to live. (He is still well now. His progress can be tracked here.) In academia, professors ponder what they would say if they knew that they were giving their "last lecture". Prior to receiving his bad news, he was already scheduled to give a lecture. He knew this would be it. You may be one of the millions who have seen the lecture on Oprah or on YouTube:



Though the treatments Randy undergoes are tough, it doesn't deter Randy's optimistic attitude and love for life. It saddens him that his three young children will grow up without a father, but he is doing his best to create happy memories with them now, leaves behind videos and letters of love to the children, and does what he can do now to ensure that his family can live as happily as possible without him in the future. His lecture on how to "Really Live Your Childhood Dreams" is for his children to watch when they grow up. His book expanded upon the anecdotes told in the lecture.
Randy talks about wanting to be a Disney Imagineer, wanting to play in the NFL, and other dreams he had as a kid. He shows that through dreaming and achieving as well as dreaming and failing, he learned through it all and lives a life he enjoys. My favorite story is from when Randy was a bachelor and took his niece and nephew for a weekend a month to give his sister some time off. He had just bought a new convertible, so his sister was lecturing the children to be sure to be careful in Uncle Randy's brand new car. The kids can't control their giggling as they watch their Uncle Randy purposely empty a can of coke right onto the backseat of his car as their mom was speaking. The lesson is that the car is just a material thing, so it does not matter. Later that weekend, Randy's nephew gets sick and throws up in the backseat, but he knows not to feel guilty.

Randy's book is not meant to be the words of a dying man. They are words of a man who truly knows how to live. He touched the lives of many in his popular undergraduate multi-disciplinary course, Building Virtual Worlds. He is also the innovator behind Alice, which I wrote about earlier. Now through his lecture and his book, he will touch more lives, but most importantly, he will reach those of his three children.

Playstation 3: a Blu-ray player that you can play games on

In Monday's post I mentioned that I have an XBox 360 and a Wii. Well, yesterday, I just gave in and bought a Playstation 3.

As a gaming console, the Playstation 3 is not very attractive for someone who already owns other consoles. They have lost many of their exclusive games and had many canceled games as well. I personally do not plan on buy any games on it until Metal Gear Solid 4 comes out in June. Instead, I view the Playstation 3 as an affordable and attractive option for a Blu-ray player, with the added advantage that it has a harddrive and I can play games on it too.

With the withdrawal of HD-DVD from the media industry, Blu-ray has raised in popularity, but also in prices. The Playstation 3 is actually becoming one of the cheaper options for a Blu-ray player, at $399. Even the XBox 360 is trying to get in on the action.

So until Metal Gear Solid 4 comes out, I will continue to watch DVDs on my XBox 360, play games on the 360 and Wii, and now start watching Blu-ray discs off my new PS3.

Note: Two days after I mentioned how the Wii cannot play movies yet, I learned that the BBC announced a streaming video service for the Wii.

Tax Tools

Taxes are due in less than a week. This year, I found myself owing the equivalent of a Macbook Air in federal taxes, and in a year that I had a lot of capital loses and no major raise. My problem turns out to be that I'm in a tax bracket where being unmarried with no mortgage and just the normal standard deduction is not the norm. This is apparently common for single people with tech jobs. Normally, in this tax bracket, it is assumed that you will have enough itemized deductions such as a large mortgage interest deduction. But I've never been ready to settle down, so I rent instead of buying a place. Though it was a shock to me how much I owe, I calmed down to realize that it was actually better this way, since I have been earning interest on that money since, and I did withhold more money this year than I owed in taxes last year, so I cannot be penalized. But for those who would rather withhold the right amount, the IRS provides a calculator to determine your withholdings.

Now there are a lot of programs out there to figure your taxes. The most common is probably TurboTax, though it costs $50-100 if you cannot use the EZ form. There are free alternatives out there, but many with a salary limit, making them unusable for those of us with tech jobs. I recommend TaxACT for filing federal taxes. It is free no matter which forms you need and there's no salary limit, though you have to put up with ads on their site. For state taxes, I would say that depends on the state. Some of have very good forms that you can fill out right on their site, while others have less to offer. This is particularly more difficult if you have to file in multiple states, so you're on your own there.

Online Movie Rentals

The battle over video media formats is an everlasting one. Recently HD-DVD succumbed to Blu-ray over the market of high definition media storage format, but why hasn't Blu-ray taken off? The answer can be found in the increasing number of digital media rental services.

I watch movies from a 40" LCD HDTV hooked up to a digital cable box, a computer, an XBox 360, and a Wii. The most obvious source is the digital cable box. With a multitude of channels, premium channels, and ON-Demand, there are plenty of movies to watch. But what about all these other devices?

Amazon Unbox

This is my favorite of all the online video rental methods. Rental prices range from $0.99 to $3.99, and movies can be bought as well. The negative to Amazon Unbox is that you are required to install their software to watch the movies, and their software is PC only. The plus though is that their software is very good, not very big, and it works. They have a great selection, and they offer the same rating system as they have on the rest of their site, so they can provide recommendations on what movies you may like. You can RemoteLoad, allowing you to be at work, and start downloading a movie onto your home computer for when you get home, though you don't have to wait for a movie to completely download to start watching it. And for rentals, the rental time does not start until you start watching. So you can download several movies onto your laptop for a trip, and wait to watch them whenever you want.

Netflix

If you already have a Netflix membership, you can watch an unlimited number of movies for free from online as well! Movies that are available instantly will have a "Play" button next to the standard "Add to Queue" one. The best part is you don't have to wait for the delay of mailing your movie and waiting for them to mail you a new one. However, there are still several flaws to their system, so I do not recommend this as highly as Amazon, even if you already have an account, making it cost nothing extra to use this method. First of all, their selection is inconsistent. A movie you started watching yesterday might not be still online today for you to finish it. I have run into this problem on numerous occasions already. The movie will even show up in your recently watched instant movies list, even after it's taken off their inventory of instant watch movies. Since Netflix streams their movies to you, unlike Amazon Unbox, you cannot download it on your laptop to bring on a trip. You must have "an active broadband connection to the Internet," as their requirements state. Another requirement is that Netflix is also PC only. So while this may be a cheaper way to watch movies online, it is a far less convenient one.

Blockbuster Total Access
Since I just mentioned Netflix, I thought it would only be fair to mention BLOCKBUSTER Total Access as well, even though I personally am not a member. So I looked around online for information on their online video rental service, and was surprised to find that I came up with nothing! I see they have a free one month trial though. So if someone knows differently and it does exist, let me know about their online video rental service and I'll give it a try to review it as well. Otherwise, they get a zero for not having one at all.

iTunes
The popular digital music site has also gotten into digital media. Unlike the previous services, I have not found a way to have the system recommend movies to you, but it is also the only one that is Mac-compatible. This requires downloading their software, but it's the same one as the one for music, so if you already use iTunes for music, you have the software and are already familiar with the store interface. Also, you can easily download movies to watch on your iPhone. Unfortunately, I find their player a bit flawed. "Full screen" doesn't quite mean full screen. Instead it means, "small movie with a lot of black background that you need to hit 'ctrl-3' to get real full screen, but we don't tell you that's what you need to do and you need to dig on the internet yourself".

XBox Live Video
The computer and the cable box are not the only devices capable of delivering digital media. The XBox Marketplace now offers XBox Live Video. Movies are bought through using Microsoft points, but of course that makes it more difficult to figure out how much you're paying for the movies. Unfortunately, it is difficult to browse their catalog, without being able to input easily through a controller. For now though, there isn't much of a selection so it didn't take too long for me to go through their list of movies and determine that there wasn't anything I was interested in watching that wasn't already available through a different method.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but the Wii does currently does not have any rental movie capability, ending my list of methods to rent movies through the internet.

Simple Animation Creation with Alice

Though I'm not very artistically inclined, I've always liked to dabble in graphics and animation. My little brother would make these incredible Star Wars-like scenes using 3DS Studio Max, so I tried too. Somehow my attempt at a clown turned into a flying toaster. Each scene took so much time to position everything just so and make sure all the angles were right on every piece. I've also tried doing renderings with POV-Ray.

While still not a masterpiece by any means, the little clip I made was done with little effort. Alice is an intuitive 3D programming environment that even kids can pick up easily. The best part is that it's completely free, thanks to my alma mater.

To create a scene in Alice, simply add the models you want, click on them, and choose the methods you want to do. Through its natural click and drag UI, you can create functions, parameters, loops, etc. It is a great way to teach a kid programming concepts while they create something fun, or just for yourself to be able to quickly generate something creative. For me, I have used it to make personal animation clips for those close to me who needed cheering up. They have been a hit every time I've done one, and one person even saved it in their iPhone for anytime viewing.

It's a quick download, completely free with all features unlocked, and fun to play with! Feel free to share with me any of your first attempts with Alice!

Elementary Math

Even from a young age, it was clear my aptitude was for math. Recently while browsing the bookstore, I picked up one of my favorite books from elementary school: Sideways Arithmetic from Wayside School by Louis Sachar. In this book, you learn to add and subtract words. For example:

 stays
+  say
------
 trust

In this problem, each letter represents a different digit and you solve for the digits. Now keep in mind that this book is written for elementary school children. I thought this was super awesome when I was young, and did this whole book non-stop, then picked up the sequel and completed it as well.

Here's another one:

 straw
x   to
------
 warts
straw 
------
chairs

If you know a mathematically inclined child, this book is a must for their library.